All my life, I have been a celebrity-watcher of sorts. I once had a subscription to People Magazine. I have looked at TMZ regularly; I am a daily reader of John Katsilometes‘s column in the Review-Journal Newspaper.

A week ago I was at the hairdresser for a permanent. A permanent has a number of times when conversation is over and one sits around in curlers and is rather lonely–unless the hair salon has a bunch of movie magazines which my salon had. (I wonder if “movie magazines” is what they call celebrity magazines these days. Not so many movie–maybe “cable/movie stars magazines”?)

I noticed in looking through one of the magazines, that I recognized some names, but there were far more that I didn’t recognize at all. Yes, I’m old and it’s the younger generation that are stars these days, but.. Here’s an example: in a photo of six stars in a “Who Wore It Best” feature, I recognized one name: Mary Steenburgen (and couldn’t remember why I recognized her name), but I didn’t recognize the other names: Brynn Whitfield, Felicity Jones, Dua Lipa, Chloe Bailey, or Francesca Farago. Complete strangers.

Is it that some of these folks are TV stars ad I don’t watch enough TV? Come on. I’m retired and in the heat, the TV groaned much of the day when I wasn’t reading.

I was so rattled by my non-recognition of names that I wanted to write about it and bought two magazines at Smith’s when I went shopping there: People and Enquirer (that’s all they had).

Gratefully, I did recognize many more names in those publications: Christopher Reeve and Harry and Meghan were on the covers. And inside, on Star Tracks, I recognized three of the five names featured: J Lo, Ben Stiller and Demi Moore. Still I didn’t know Golding and Nelly Fertado. More old-timers were featured: Kelsey Grammer, Elton John, Nicole Kidman, Carmen Electra, Alec Baldwin and even Martha Stewart. Snoop Dog was featured in a two-page ad and I’ve heard of him, too, even though I never bought any of his movies, recordings, or whatever.

James Earl Jones was featured in People and yes, he was a delight as was his wonderful voice. A well-built young man named Chase Stokes (seems like a made-up name) was featured in a two-page People article. Didn’t read it; never heard of him. But Chase can make an old lady’s heart beat.

Lots of make-up advertising pages at the end of People. If young folks buy this magazine, why all the make-up? They look pretty good without it.

An Enquirer article says Suzanne Somers’ spirit is “interacting with her husband” from the beyond. Yes, I’ve known of Suzanne, but I doubt she talks from wherever she is–unless it’s to sell something. Another article in the Enquirer talked about Katie Couric and her “loss of hair” saying that in a photo she was almost bald, but indicating at the end of the article that maybe she didn’t lose her hair after all.

Simone Biles and Richard Simmons were also Enquirer story subjects as was Coco Auston. (Is she still around? Didn’t know that). A new magazine called “Drew” (Barrymore) is on sale. (No thanks, but I like her.) Tom Cruise and his Olympics Skydive was a subject, too.

Hooray, I may be beyond Bob Hope, Satchel Paige, Perry Como and Sonja Henie, but I am not totally out of It after all.